Eric D. Brownhttp://ericbrown.com
Technology, Strategy, People and ProjectsMon, 27 Jul 2015 15:08:37 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3Data is only as good as you make ithttp://ericbrown.com/data-is-only-as-good-as-you-make-it.htm
http://ericbrown.com/data-is-only-as-good-as-you-make-it.htm#respondMon, 27 Jul 2015 15:08:36 +0000http://ericbrown.com/?p=9410I’m currently working with a client who is very immature when it comes to data analysis. This particular client has no history of analyzing data and barely any history of reporting. Their idea of analysis is looking at a few finance reports to see how the business is doing.

Now, if this particular client was a small business, I’d have no problem with this approach….but they aren’t. They are a multi-million dollar business with multiple departments spread across multiple states. They really should no better – and their CEO said as much to me during our first conversation.

I’ve been working with this client to set up processes to collect, analyze and use data throughout their business. When I started the project, I spoke to the CEO about the need to not only work on data collection and analytics but also the data ‘culture’ within the business. The agreement was that I would work on the data collection/analysis aspects and the CEO would drive the cultural change needed. Not ideal but that’s how these projects go sometimes.

According to a conversation I had with the CEO a few weeks ago, the project has been a huge success. The company is now talking about data in ways they never did. Their CEO is constantly looking for additional data to help make better decisions. Data is being incorporated into all aspects of the strategic planning process to try to develop stronger plans for the future.

When I spoke to the CEO last week, I wasn’t a bit surprised to hear him say the following:

Everyone has all the data they will ever need, but nobody is actually using the data!

Apparently, the majority of people within the business love all the data and ‘reports’ but they aren’t actually using that data to make any real changes to their operations. They are viewing the reports and, by all accounts, love to see ‘what is happening’ but they aren’t viewing the data or reporting with a critical eye to making improvements to their business.

This is the ‘data culture’ issue that needs addressing within most organizations. You can collect and analyze all the data you want but if you don’t use that data for something more than taking up storage space and processing time, you are wasting money and time.

Data is only as good as you make it.

]]>http://ericbrown.com/data-is-only-as-good-as-you-make-it.htm/feed/0Foto Friday – Titmouse Bathinghttp://ericbrown.com/foto-friday-titmouse-bathing-2.htm
http://ericbrown.com/foto-friday-titmouse-bathing-2.htm#respondFri, 24 Jul 2015 11:08:46 +0000http://ericbrown.com/?p=9403I captured this Titmouse bathing in the local bird bath at the Palo Duro Canyon. Captured with Canon 7D Mark II and Canon 100-400 L Mark II handheld
See more photos in my flickr photostream and/or my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography, feel free to support my addiction habit by visiting Amazon (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear. Or, if you are interested in renting gear before buying, try out my favorite camera, lens and gear rental site – Borrowlenses.com (affiliate link) – the folks at Borrowlenses are awesome. All proceeds from clicking the above affiliate links go to more photographs.

]]>http://ericbrown.com/foto-friday-titmouse-bathing-2.htm/feed/0The Dichotomy of Data Access and Data Privacyhttp://ericbrown.com/the-dichotomy-of-data-access-and-data-privacy.htm
http://ericbrown.com/the-dichotomy-of-data-access-and-data-privacy.htm#respondTue, 21 Jul 2015 14:00:35 +0000http://ericbrown.com/?p=9397In order to use data within your business, you must first collect that data. Seems simple enough right? You capture some data, store it somewhere and the use that data at a later time in your analysis.

What about data privacy concerns? Where are you collecting your data? How are you protecting that data? Are you collecting/using social network data or other user-generated data from public sources? If you are using data from ‘users’, do they know their data is being collected, stored and used for something other than the system it was generated in?

These types of questions are the ones that every organization and data scientist should constantly be asking, especially if a single byte of captured and/or analyzed data is generated by a consumer or user of your systems.

In addition to the data that you might capture within your organization (and perhaps from social media, blogs and other user-generated content), there will be data available from data brokers. It may not be next week or next year, but you can bet that all the data that are captured via wearables and other Internet of Things devices will be made available for a price.

Citizens and consumers, who generate thousands of bytes of data every day – switching on devices or utilities, making purchases, boarding transport or just walking down the street in CCTV cities – can celebrate. The data they collectively generate is an asset that is being mined to create value and making companies and even industries rich on the back of it. Now the personal data exchange is coming.

Companies will jump at the chance to buy data from these brokers and exchanges and begin using that data in their analysis. Just think about how powerful it would be for an insurance company to have access to your health data via Apple Health or Fitbit or data from a device in your car that reports on speed, location, distance driven, etc.

From a data science and an organizational perspective, having access to data like this is an enormous advantage for any company looking to better understand their clients. If you can gather data on individual users daily activities, it makes it much easier to market to those users as well as customize your products/services to those users.

From an individual perspective, it is a little frightening to know that every aspect of my driving or my fitness routines (or lack thereof) could find its way into the hands of my insurance company. Likewise, it is disconcerting to know that said data could also make its way into the hands of companies who want to market their services or products to me based on where I’ve driven or how far (or how little) I’ve walked in the last few weeks.

As data scientists and organizations, we want to be able to access and analyze as much data as possible and we want data that is as granular as possible. With personal data available today (or available in the near future), we have very granular data.

As individuals, we are (or should be) concerned with how companies are using our own data. We at least want to know how that data might be used and when it is being used.

This is the dichotomy we face today. We want to use as much data as possible but we also worry about data privacy of our own data. The challenge for any organization or data scientist is to find the right balance between using the right data with the right granularity with necessary privacy issues that consumers need and want.

]]>http://ericbrown.com/the-dichotomy-of-data-access-and-data-privacy.htm/feed/0Foto Friday – Sunrise on Isle of Palmshttp://ericbrown.com/foto-friday-sunrise-on-isle-of-palms.htm
http://ericbrown.com/foto-friday-sunrise-on-isle-of-palms.htm#respondFri, 17 Jul 2015 15:00:41 +0000http://ericbrown.com/?p=9392This is a sunrise from our trip to Isle of Palms last year. Tons of color. Captured with Canon 7D Mark II and Canon 17-40 L.
See more photos in my flickr photostream and/or my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography, feel free to support my addiction habit by visiting Amazon (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear. Or, if you are interested in renting gear before buying, try out my favorite camera, lens and gear rental site – Borrowlenses.com (affiliate link) – the folks at Borrowlenses are awesome. All proceeds from clicking the above affiliate links go to more photographs.

“Big data is obviously important to most organizations. There’s plenty of data out there and even more data being generated every day. But big analytics is just as important. Without the ability to analyze the data you have at the speed and scale it is being generated, your organization will never really be able to fully take advantage of big data.”

I wanted to follow up that post with another that talks a bit more about the importance of analytics and converting data into actionable insight.

If you ask business executives if they’d prefer more data or more insight into their business, most would (and should) say that they want and need more insight into their businesses. Some people might argue that in order to get more insight, you need more data but in my experiences this is far from true.

More isn’t always better. More data doesn’t deliver more insight. Businesses do not need more data, they need to be able to use data better. Once an organization figures out how to analyze data more effectively to gain the insights they need, only then will more data make a difference.

Data itself is interesting but useless until you do something to find and understand the ‘signals’ contained within. Until you convert your data into information you have nothing of value. Until this conversion happens, you’ve done nothing but waste money on collecting and storing a whole lot of nothing.

In order to turn this ‘nothing’ into something, companies must find ways to turn find the signal within the enormous amounts of data. This signal will then lead to gaining information, knowledge and, ultimately, wisdom. This is where ‘big analytics’ comes into play because in order to truly find value in big data, you must analyze that data at scale. Sure, you can use excel or some other simple approach to try to dig through your data but excel won’t cut it for the large amounts of data that most organizations need to analyze.

Companies need to analyze at scale to find the insights that their executives need and want. This requires the right analytics tools and systems, the right people with the right skills and a culture that allows people to dig into whatever data they feel is necessary to find answers (and new questions).

Neither big data nor big analytics is the answer to today’s business problems but they are the start to finding many answers that a business needs to find as well as finding some questions that organizations didn’t know they had. It won’t be easy and it can be expensive, but if you are truly looking for insights into your business, there’s no better way to find those insights than by combining a good big data strategy with a good big analytics strategy.

Big data and big analytics can provide big insights for any organization willing to put the time and effort into building a big analytics practice.

]]>http://ericbrown.com/big-data-big-analytics-big-insights.htm/feed/0Foto Friday – Towhee in the treehttp://ericbrown.com/foto-friday-towhee-in-the-tree.htm
http://ericbrown.com/foto-friday-towhee-in-the-tree.htm#respondFri, 03 Jul 2015 15:00:51 +0000http://ericbrown.com/?p=9377Captured with Canon 7D Mark II and Canon 100-400 L Mark II handheld.
See more photos in my flickr photostream and/or my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography, feel free to support my addiction habit by visiting Amazon (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear. Or, if you are interested in renting gear before buying, try out my favorite camera, lens and gear rental site – Borrowlenses.com (affiliate link) – the folks at Borrowlenses are awesome. All proceeds from clicking the above affiliate links go to more photographs.

In the article, the author, Larisa Bedgood, does a very good job of addressing the question of whether big data is important for organizations to focus on. The author rites that:

The moral of the story? It’s about the data, or rather the insights derived from the data. It’s not enough to simply collect the data. Your data must tell a story. Stories of who your customers are, what your competitors are doing, what offers will be most appealing to prospects, which cross-sell and up-sell opportunities you should offer, and so on.

So true.

Big data is indeed worth it as long as you approach the collection, storage, analysis and use of data in the right way. Your data must tell a story but you must be willing to have that story write itself rather than forcing the story along the lines you want it to go.

If you are ‘doing’ big data the right way, you’ll often find more questions than answers, but that’s what makes big data ‘worth it’. With big data, you aren’t just going through the motions…you have to truly put the effort in to find the real value within your data.

Is bit data worth it? Absolutely…but only if you put the time and effort into the analysis of that data. Big data isn’t easy, but it is worth it.

]]>http://ericbrown.com/is-big-data-worth-it.htm/feed/0Big Data, Big Analytics and Youhttp://ericbrown.com/big-data-big-analytics-and-you.htm
http://ericbrown.com/big-data-big-analytics-and-you.htm#commentsWed, 24 Jun 2015 18:18:42 +0000http://ericbrown.com/?p=9358Big data has been a popular topic over the last few years. Many organizations have been studying big data systems and processes as well as the science behind capturing, storing, analyzing and using large amounts of data within their businesses.

Many organizations that I’ve worked with over the years have done a very thorough job of understanding the technology requirements of big data. They have adopted technologies and systems to allow them to capture and store enormous amounts of data from many different parts of their organization. Additionally, many of these companies have begun to capture data from outside their organization to understand how their use of social media and other marketing channels affects their business and customer base.

While these companies have the technology skills to capture, store and process data at a large scale, many of the organizations I’ve spoken with are at a bit of a loss for what to do with the data. I’ve had more than a few CIO’s and CMO’s tell me that they have the infrastructure in place to handle big data but they aren’t sure they have the skills needed to take advantage of all of the data they have. These organizations have the basic skills to do simple analysis but most are lacking in the skills (and the people) to be able to truly dive into their data to find the questions and answers that lay within that data.

When people talk about big data today, there is very little talk about big analytics. Many people assume that data analytics is part of the discussion that is being held, but that assumption is often wrong. Everyone knows analytics are important, but often everyone thinks ‘they’ are thinking about the analytics aspect of big data. IT professionals tend to focus on the technical aspects of big data while marketing tends to focus on what they can do with all the data they have but few focus on the step needed to get from the ‘collection/storage’ phase to the ‘usage’ phase.

This is unfortunate because in order to use all that data being collected, it must be converted from ‘data’ to ‘knowledge.’ To make that conversion happen, you need to have quality analytics tools and people with the right skills to use those tools. Without the ability to analyze your data, you’ve really just done nothing more than waste money to store enormous amounts of data.

Big data is obviously important to most organizations. There’s plenty of data out there and even more data being generated every day. But big analytics is just as important. Without the ability to analyze the data you have at the speed and scale it is being generated, your organization will never really be able to fully take advantage of big data.

]]>http://ericbrown.com/big-data-big-analytics-and-you.htm/feed/1Foto Friday – Polar Bear Giving me the ‘look’http://ericbrown.com/foto-friday-polar-bear-giving-me-the-look.htm
http://ericbrown.com/foto-friday-polar-bear-giving-me-the-look.htm#respondFri, 19 Jun 2015 12:47:04 +0000http://ericbrown.com/?p=9354Captured this Polar Bear at the Albuquerque Zoo with a Canon 7D Mark II and Canon 100-400 L Mark II handheld.
See more photos in my flickr photostream and/or my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography, feel free to support my addiction habit by visiting Amazon (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear. Or, if you are interested in renting gear before buying, try out my favorite camera, lens and gear rental site – Borrowlenses.com (affiliate link) – the folks at Borrowlenses are awesome. All proceeds from clicking the above affiliate links go to more photographs.

]]>http://ericbrown.com/foto-friday-polar-bear-giving-me-the-look.htm/feed/0Foto Friday – Texture…A landscape from White Sands National Monumenthttp://ericbrown.com/foto-friday-texture-a-landscape-from-white-sands-national-monument.htm
http://ericbrown.com/foto-friday-texture-a-landscape-from-white-sands-national-monument.htm#respondFri, 12 Jun 2015 11:14:01 +0000http://ericbrown.com/?p=9350This is an ‘abstract’ from our trip to White Sands National Monument. It kind of breaks a lot of riles of photography, but I like it nonetheless.
See more photos in my flickr photostream and/or my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography, feel free to support my addiction habit by visiting Amazon (affiliate link) to purchase new or used photographic gear. Or, if you are interested in renting gear before buying, try out my favorite camera, lens and gear rental site – Borrowlenses.com (affiliate link) – the folks at Borrowlenses are awesome. All proceeds from clicking the above affiliate links go to more photographs.